Seasonality in the Vertical Structure of Long-Term Temperature Trends Over North America

Abstract

ABSTRACT The surface warming of northern continents during the twentieth century is not uniform across seasons. Surface warming is particularly pronounced over northwestern Canada, where winter trends are much larger than summer ones. The upper-air temperature trends over the region are analyzed in three radiosonde datasets from 1958 to 2012 to assess their seasonal structure. The seasonal variation of upper-air trends can provide insights into the dynamical and thermodynamical processes generating these trends, including warming at the surface. The focus is not on the canonical structure of secular (i.e., long-term) trends—tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling—but its seasonal variation. We find the boreal winter-minus-summer difference in trends over northwestern Canada to be positive and large in the lower troposphere (p ≳ 500 hPa) and lower stratosphere (50 hPa ≲ p ≲ 150 hPa); it is largest at the surface and smallest at the tropopause. The decreasing seasonality of the tropospheric trend with height supports the attribution of the notable seasonality of surface warming in this region to both land–surface–hydroclimate interactions and changes in winter circulation. In the lower stratosphere, a cooling trend is evident in all seasons, not unexpectedly, but a pronounced seasonality is again apparent, with the strongest cooling in summer. The near-zero trend tropopause region is a rare point of confluence for seasonal trends.